


Dealer's Choice

by JaqofSpades



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: An Echolls Family Christmas, F/M, Post Episode Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-26
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2017-12-27 16:34:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Veronica collects on favours owed after the events of  An Echolls Family Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dealer's Choice

**Author's Note:**

> A supposed 'new follower ficlet' for rottweilersatemylaptop on tumblr, who asked for Weevil teaching Veronica to ride a motorcycle. Weevil was awful chatty and my definition of ficlet is somewhat blurry, okay?

I owe you, he'd said. Sure, she'd wanted to retrieve Kane's laptop for reasons he doesn't like to think about, but she'd gotten him his money back, and given him the chance to win more. Can't argue with that.

Even so, he nearly choked when she brought it up. Talk about riding his hog. Girl wanted to _learn_ to ride, and when he was done laughing, he couldn't really think of a reason to say no. The fact that he'd never let a girl sit up front before probably wasn't one, and the grief the boys were giving him sure as hell didn't count. He knows what pussy whipped looks like, and he ain't it.

She's cute, he'd give her that. A little blonde firecracker and there was no shame in admitting he liked to light her up and watch her go off. It doesn't mean he had a thing for her or anything.

He liked looking at her, sure. Liked dripping dirty words in her ear and trying to make her blush. She didn't, though. She fired them right back with a lift of her eyebrow and a pucker of pink lips that made him groan. Her sense of humour, he bluffed, but funny doesn't get him hard. It was pure lust and left him wondering how long 'til she figured it out.

Because they were doing each other favours on the regular now. It's just business, he knew that, but the boys didn't see the big picture the way he did. They just saw a blonde 09er telling them what to do. There were only so many times he could tell 'em they were working off Hector and Bootsy's debt, or his own. He could have told them about the secret smiles they shared in the halls, or the way Veronica had felt in his arms on his grandma's porch, but he didn't. And he certainly didn't tell them about the plans for Sunday.

Not that it's a date. Just another favour. But he's picking her up at 10am and they're cruising past Santa Catalina then up through the mountains, and out into the desert a little. Somewhere with no traffic, she'd ordered. Minimise the chance of embarrassment, she'd admitted with a wry grin.

“I'll do you right,” he had smirked, and his heart didn't skip a beat when her lips curled into the most wicked smile he'd ever seen. It didn't.

*

Her secret smile is lurking in the corners of her mouth when he pulls up next to her car at Dog Beach. He throws her the spare helmet and she climbs on, hanging over his shoulder to speak into his ear. “Don't get too comfortable, vato,” she teases, so he hits the gas without releasing the brake, making the bike buck under them. She collapses down behind him with an uncharacteristic squeal, then thumps him with her gloved hand before wrapping them around his waist.

“Lesson one: don't get too cocky,” he yells over his shoulder as they turn onto the highway. She buries her face against his back to muffle her giggle, but he can feel it vibrating through them both anyway. He gives in to the urge to grin and if anybody sees them, it's the thrill of kicking the bike up to top speed. Nothing to do with the blonde on the back.

The long climb up to the plateau demands his full concentration as he navigates a long series of hairpin bends, and he's quiet after that, just enjoying the smell of mesquite and baked earth. He's half waiting for her to ask where the hell they're going, but she never does. Instead, she looks abot and hums something under her breath and drags in lungfuls of the desert air. When they finally roll into the huge carpark overlooking the bluff, her smile is a revelation, completely without artifice or suspicion.

“That was just .. wonderful,” she sighs, and that's when he realises they've never done this before, just opened it up and cruised. He's ferried her around the wrong end of town, darted in and out of dark streets, swooped in for emergency pickups but he's never taken her out just for the sheer pleasure of riding. He knows why – they're business, not pleasure – but in the face of this dazed, happy girl, he's finding it hard to care.

Weevil has to look away from her shining face before he does something stupid, so he shuts off the engine and climbs off the bike, leaving her sitting alone.

“Dry run first, Mars,” he says shortly, and indicates she should move forward onto the driver's seat. She raises an eyebrow in question, but does as she's told, gingerly reaching for the hand controls.

“So. Accelerator. Brake. Gears,” he points out, nodding at the relevant controls and getting her to indicate each one. “Ignition is easy on my baby, keyed just like a car. Dirt bikes and the like, you have to kick 'em into life.”

“Can I start her up? Can I?” she mock-begs, and she might be laying it on thick, but he can see genuine excitement in those baby blues as well.

He nods and tries not to smile, but it breaks through anyway. She's too goddamn cute like this, and that's what he's going to focus on to get him through this. Because cute isn't sexy, and if he's thinking about puppies and kittens and shit, he's not thinking about how she looks straddling his bike all by herself. Cute isn't this bad girl fantasy come to life and if he lets his mind wander in that direction, how the hell he's gonna keep his hands under control when she takes him for a ride for the first time?

Girls do it all the time, he reminds himself, and then he thinks of the way she tucks her thumbs inside his belt sometimes. Other times, she holds on with one hand while the other roams idly up and down his side, even glides down the outside of his thigh. He swallows, and for the first time, wonders just how incidental those touches are. Maybe she does know when he's bluffing. Maybe that's her way of calling him on it, and he's just been too dumb to notice.

Maybes don't get you out of jail, or offer you fifty bucks for a night of keeping her safe on stakeout, he reminds himself. Maybes don't mean shit, when it comes down to it.

The familiar growl of his baby switches up to a scream as she accidentally revs the engine, and he glares at her before sliding in behind.

“Come on then, Mars. Wanna get home before dark,” he snaps. Her mouth drops at his tone, and she twists round to apologise. 

“Sorry. I'm sorry! I thought that side was the brake,” she grimaces, and then faces front again, back rigid with tension. He wants to tell her they've all done it, that accelerator on the left, brake on the right only sank in after you'd messed 'em up a few times, but he simply tells her to put it in gear instead.

They jerk a little, but once the bike picks up speed, she guides it well enough. He tells her to keep it light on the accelerator, smooth, and reaches around her to demonstrate. The dizzying rush of blood south as he enfolds her in his arms is evidence that he is full of shit – she's sexy as fuck, and he doesn't give a damn about business and pleasure, not when she smells like leather and the desert and his. His arms shake with the effort of restraining himself, and when that's when she decides to tease him.

“Don't worry, your baby is safe with me!” she sings and in that moment, he's not strong enough to be smart or snarky about it.

“What makes you think you're safe with me, girl?” he growls, and tucks himself even more tightly around her, her tiny body surrounded by his larger one, his hands swallowing hips and waist and belly alike. She drags in a gulp of air, and suddenly he can feel the texture of her skin right through his riding gloves. He can't help but slide them in a slow circle around her navel, and it's her shocked gasp that flings him back to sanity.

“Sorry. Jesus, chica. I don't know what I was thinking,” he blurts, and moves backwards to put a good six inches of space between them. 

He's expecting her skid to stop to tear strips off him - when she doesn't, he wonders if she's forgotten how to brake. Instead, she picks up speed, then neatly directs the machine out onto the open road. There's no one coming, true, but she's still learning and _fuck_ , she's moved it into third.

They're getting up to 50 miles an hour when he puts his hands over hers and tells her to throttle it down.

“Why? I'm only good for training wheels? You don't think I can handle it?” she asks, and he winces at her quiet fury.

“Nah. You're good at everything, I get that. But tearing up the interstate should probably wait 'til lesson number two. When you're not angry.”

She guides the bike into an only slightly wobbly u-turn, then heads back towards the car park at a more respectable pace. She shuts down the engine and they sit there for a long moment, as if petrified by the bad blood that had risen so suddenly between them. Then she gets up and removes her helmet. All the better to glare at him, Weevil thinks ruefully.

“Why do you think I'm angry?” she says eventually, voice carefully blank.

“I shouldna tried to come on to you,” he grunts, looking away.

“Really? _That's_ your idea of a come on?” she jeers, mouth set in that terrifying tight smile. “No wonder you're single! Because what I heard was 'you don't know me at all'. With a side of 'maybe she actually _buys_ my shit.'” Veronica stomps away, her entire body stiff with outrage. He calls after her, but she refuses to listen, or even look at him. It's so uncharacteristic it takes him a minute or two to figure it out.

That girl? Angry? She'd be tearing him to pieces. But she's licking her wounds. He's hurt her. And somewhere in this mad procession of favours and fencing and half-assed flirting, she's become the last person he wants to hurt.

He takes a deep breath, because it's his turn to deal, and it's time up the ante.

“I wasn't thinking, V. I was … kinda ...” he stumbles, and she drifts closer, curious. 

One eyebrow hooks high when he fails to continue. He wonders if she knows he's completely dropped the bluff. He dismisses the thought. Veronica Mars, man. She always knows.

“You, me, just doing something together … it was different, okay? I forgot.”

“Forgot what, exactly?”

Because Veronica Mars never lets a man off easy. Suck it up, Navarro. 

“That we're not like that. That I don't get to touch you,” he says baldly.

She shifts on her feet and looks away. Trying to figure out how to let him down easy, Weevil expects. He wants to tell her it's okay, she doesn't have to be into him, he'd never actually thought that, but … it sticks in his throat. Because despite all their bobbing and ducking, he'd caught the sidelong glances, and seen the heat in her eyes when she looked at him. He's been with enough girls to know what that means, and since Christmas, she hadn't been doing much hide it. But he ain't gonna beg.

He shakes his head and turns towards the bike. “We done?”

Her fingers burn right through the leather of his jacket when she grabs his arm to pull him back towards her.

“No, we are not done!” she snaps. “So – you 'don't get to touch me?'. What's that about?”

He groans. Poker game or not, he doesn't owe anyone on Earth enough to make him talk about his feelings. Certainly not her. 

“It is what it is, V. Nice day, warm breeze, pretty girl. Don't go makin' it something it's not.”

She recoils and for a moment, the disappointment is naked on her face. But her chin comes up and her eyes narrow, and when she speaks again, her voice is liquid danger.

“Wanna know a secret?”

He freezes, because she's channelling Lilly, and he doesn't want to know what fucked up mind games those two could have invented together. But then, Lilly never offered to share her secrets with him. He raises his eyebrows in question and waits for her to knock him out of the game.

“I don't believe you. And you're wrong.”

Huh? “Wrong how?”

“There's only one reason you don't get to touch me, you know.” She unleashes the head tilt and he closes his eyes because, yes, she doesn't have to flip her hair, not when she sets his whole body screaming just with that. He's hoarse when he finally makes himself answer.

“What's that?”

She leans forward, pushing herself right up into his face, aquamarine eyes glaring into his own.

“You didn't ask.”

He's still digesting that, marvelling at it, when she jams his cousin's bike helmet down over her head and sits herself back on the bike. Her hand is reaching for the ignition when he realises he needs to get himself on, or get left behind.

Not a chance he's willing to take. Not now that it's dealer's choice. 

_fin_


End file.
